rest assured, in my job, i thought that i had known the depths of some serious and acrid loathing. i was convinced i could not have mustered up a single ounce more bitterness and discontent at the monstrous, life-draining yoke around my neck and its determined theft of my free time, my civility, and my dignity (not to mention my creativity) than i had already exuded, currently and continuously.
this is before i had worked in sewage.
when you are wading, ankle deep through a river of typhoid-infested stank-water, you begin to reassess the particular order and nomenclature of your shit list.
the drains, which one trusts to silently and valiantly carry on their unseen disposal of all that is groddy, were suddenly acting in an very un-drain-like manner and flooded the restaurant, consequently, i was bar tending on the river Ganges and mixing cocktails by leaping across frogger-esque series of milk crates i had concocted to keep my socks dry.
it didn’t work.
on the plus side, the resulting two additional feet of stature granted by the milk crates allowed me to tower over puny cocktailers like a muddle-wielding Amazon. (and by that i mean “slightly below average height.” or “i could finally see above the counter”)
i’m very glad i didn’t end up getting that tattoo on my foot yesterday (a bacterial “vacancy!” sign.)(i mean that as a metaphor. not, you know, the thing i was going to get tattooed. but now that you mention it…..) or else the all papers would have read “Oakland girl dies from fucked-up ‘Oregon Trail’ disease” (you know, the kind that inevitably kills off your whole wagon train like dysentery or cholera. well, at least Zeke, anyway. which is cool, cause that bastard couldn’t shoot a buffalo to save his life. plus he Bogarted all the hard-tack.)

now if you’ll excuse me, i have to burn my socks and sterilize my everything.

oh, and to the miserable fuck who dropped my coat in the scum-pond: if i ever find out who you are i will reach into your throat, rip out your intestines and hang them on my Christmas tree. ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥